The San Francisco Homeless Resource wiki, SFHOMELESS.NET, is the result of a collaboration between homeless advocates David Beall of the San Francisco Revival Ministry, Julie Rosenthal of the Homeless Advocacy Project, and Wolfram Alderson of the Neighborhood Parks Council and also working with the Local Homeless Coordinating Board. The main goal of creating the wiki was to put the Homeless Advocacy Project's Resource Manual on the internet. The manual is commonly referred to as "the resource Bible", and was previously only available in a printed version. It then soon became clear that this was an opportunity to include the advocate community and take homeless advocacy and communication to a higher level of service.

As we mentioned last fall, GrandCentral's Project CARE initiative, which provides permanent telephone numbers and voicemail services to the homeless, has partnered with San Francisco's Project Homeless Connect (PHC) to support the city's homeless as they get back on their feet.

ut, faced with a seemingly endless buffet of appetizer-size software, industry insiders have begun to question the basic philosophy that Web-based mini-applications are inherently better than their bulkier but more powerful competitors. "Running your application on Rails places a huge limit on what you can do," says Charles Forman, founder of iminlikewithyou.com, who has abandoned the framework for Merb, a rival programming tool. That promises more scalability. A recent survey by the NPD Group found that fewer than 1 percent of desktop PC users had replaced a desktop application — such as Microsoft Office — with a streamlined online alternative like Google Docs, even though the latter is free. Design expert Don Norman, a consultant for Microsoft, says that one reason for the disparity is that customers actually like and use the extra features. "Complexity is a necessary byproduct of the modern age," he says. "When you actually sit down and analyze what you need to get the job done, it's not simplicity."

Artificial

Artificial cultures are instant. They’re big bangs made of mission statements, declarations, and rules. They are obvious, ugly, and plastic. Artificial culture is paint.

Real

Real cultures are built over time. They’re the result of action, reaction, and truth. They are nuanced, beautiful, and authentic. Real culture is patina.

Don’t think about how to create a culture, just do the right things for you, your customers, and your team and it’ll happen.

The new rules

But what does this all boil down to for companies that want to be successful in this relatively new environment? In the working paper, Deighton and Kornfeld discuss 5 aspects of digital interactivity, including

• Thought tracing. Firms infer states of mind from the content of a Web search and serve up relevant advertising; a market born of search terms develops.


• Ubiquitous connectivity. As people become increasingly "plugged in" through cell phones and other devices, marketing opportunities become more frequent as well—and technology develops to protect users from unwanted intrusions. A market in access and identity results.


• Property exchanges. As with Napster, Craigslist, and eBay, people participate in the anonymous exchange of goods and services. Firms compete with these exchanges, and a market in service, reputation, and reliability develops.


• Social exchanges. People build identities in virtual communities like Korea's Cyworld (90 percent of Koreans in their 20s are members). Firms may then sponsor or co-opt communities. A market in community develops that competes on functionality and status.


• Cultural exchanges. While advertising has always been part of popular culture, technology has increased the rate of exchange and competition for buzz. In addition to Dove's campaign, Deighton cites BMW's initiative to hire Hollywood directors and actors to create short, Web-only films featuring BMWs. In the summer of 2001, the company recorded 9 million downloads.

"It speaks to a certain authenticity, which in this world becomes a much more desirable property than exaggeration."

Here's the 21st century version of a chicken in every pot: a laptop for every child. Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT professor, is founder of One Laptop Per Child, an international non-profit that created the XO laptop, a durable machine that began mass production in November and is designed for kids in the world's poorest and most remote regions. If nothing else, Negroponte has proven that no grand vision goes unpunished. Last fall a BusinessWeek writer panned the program in a column titled, "It's Time To Call One Laptop Per Child A Failure." The Wall Street Journal ran a front page story under the headline, "How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants." And it's not just the press. Negroponte has sparred with critics such as Bill Gates of Microsoft and Craig Barnett of Intel. His testy relationship with Intel briefly turned into an uneasy-alliance but blew up this month when, Negroponte says, an Intel salesperson tried to convince the government of Peru to scrap its deal with OLPC and instead buy the company's competing laptop, the Intel Classmate. Intel has blamed the split on "philosophical" differences. Negroponte presses on.

For science geeks of all levels of intensity this article from Science Magazine is like a candy store. Anybody who by chance stops by this post should go to the original article provided above. Below are the samplings of resources available on these various subjects.